Monday, 30 March 2015

Acts to protect religious liberty, supported by our president in the past, are now being classified as pure evil by the righteous lefties. As one Twitterer put it, these laws were supposed to protect Native Americans, not Christians. And another added: “People have a really hard time defending rights that they can’t imagine themselves ever exercising.”

Sunday, 29 March 2015

Former Vante CFO and treasurer, Adam Mark Smith, went from being relatively unknown to an unemployed, virally-hated man with a video he thought was taking a stand against discrimination of gays.

In a YouTube video, Smith berated Chick-fil-A employee Rachel Elizabeth at the drive-thru window when she gave him, a protester, a free cup of water.

[...]

The day after posting his rant, Smith lost his job and Vante released a statement noting that Smith’s actions “did not reflect [their] corporate values in any way.”

According to Boston News, Smith went from earning $200,000 a year, with cushy stock options valued at $1 million, to losing everything. His family even had to move into an RV.

[...]

Now on food stamps, Smith and his family are still feeling the consequences of the choice he made three years ago. Using the experience as inspiration, Smith has penned a memoir titled A Million Dollar Cup of Water: Discovering the Wealth in Authenticity.

Not America’s Christians, not Israel’s Jews; some people a little more exotic, a little more extreme, ... and a lot more lethal:

An Iranian journalist writing about the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran has defected. In an interview Amir Hossein Motaghi, has some harsh words for his native Iran. He also has a damning indictment of America's role in the nuclear negotiations.

“The U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal," Motaghi told a TV station after just defecting from the Iranian delegation while abroad for the nuclear talks.

Saturday, 28 March 2015

An examination of the server that housed the personal email account that Hillary Rodham Clinton used exclusively when she was secretary of state showed that there are no copies of any emails she sent during her time in office, her lawyer told a congressional committee on Friday.

After her representatives determined which emails were government-related and which were private, a setting on the account was changed to retain only emails sent in the previous 60 days, her lawyer, David Kendall, said. He said the setting was altered after she gave the records to the government.

Lots of discussion about the possible anti-Semitism of Lena Dunham’s comparison of her dog and her Jewish boyfriend, but nary a word about its sexism. Really, can you imagine a major media outlet publishing “My Jewish Girlfriend Is a Complete Bitch”?

UPDATE: After posting, I noticed that Red Eye’s Joanne Nosuchinsky included gender as one of the variables you could change to prohibit the politically correct from running the piece. And this from Ruthie Blum:

Most striking about the enraged responses was what they did not include: The impunity with which women are allowed to express contempt for members of the male sex, while cloaking their own neediness and hunger for love in outdated feminist lingo.

Friday, 27 March 2015

2. Jeb Bush. The consensus favorite (though I remain a bit skeptical). Solid, soft-spoken, serious, with executive experience and significant achievements as governor. What he lacks in passion, he makes up for in substance. And he has shown backbone in sticking to his semi-heretical positions on immigration and Common Core.

Obvious liability: His name. True, it helps him raise tens of millions of dollars, but it saddles him with legacy and dynastic issues that negate the inherent GOP advantage of running a new vs. old, not-again campaign against Hillary.

His “backbone” in sticking to positions Republicans hate may be a plus, but the positions themselves are his obvious liability, and they outweigh the backbone factor.

Krauthammer just had to poke the Paulnuts with a sharp stick, placing their idol at 30-1 behind Mike Huckabee (15-1):

7. Rand Paul. Events have conspired against him. Obama’s setbacks and humiliations abroad have created a national mood less conducive to Paul’s non-interventionism. His nearly 13-hour anti-drone filibuster would not fly today. Is trying to tack back, even signing the anti-Iran-deal letter of the 47 senators. Strong youth appeal, though outreach to minorities less successful thus far. Bottom line: High floor of devoted libertarians; low ceiling in today’s climate. 30-1.

Thursday, 26 March 2015

There’s a list of thirteen words including “polarizing,” “calculating,” “insincere” and “secretive” that can no longer be used to describe Hillary! because they’re sexist. How could such a list not include “cankles”?

My previous post about domestic policies rooted in fantasy has been eclipsed. The official position on the disaster in Yemen:

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: I know you’re asked this every time something terrible happens in Yemen, but now that we have essentially complete chaos in Yemen, does the White House still believe that Yemen is the model for a counter-terrorism strategy?

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE: Jon, the White House does continue to believe that a successful counter-terrorism strategy is one that will build up the capacity of the central government to have local fighters on the ground to take the fight to extremists in their own country ...

KARL: That’s astounding. You’re saying that you still see Yemen as the model, that building up the central government which has now collapsed, a president who has apparently fled the country, Saudi troops have amassed on one border, the Iranians supporting the rebels. You consider this as a model for counter-terrorism?

EARNEST: Again, Jon, what the United States considers to be our strategy when confronting the effort to try to mitigate the threat that is posed by extremists is to prevent them from establishing a safe haven. And certainly in a chaotic, dangerous situation like in Yemen, what the United States will do and has done is work to try to support the central government, build up the capacity of local fighters, and use our own technological and military capabilities to apply pressure on the extremists there.

No a successful strategy is one that identifies, hunts, and kills these savages using as much force as necessary.

Meanwhile, here’s a position even more “astounding” than the one on Yemen:

In the wake of the announcement that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will face desertion charges, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki expressed no regrets about the deal that brought Bergdahl back last May.

In an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly set to air Wednesday night, Psaki said the deal was “absolutely” worth it, while adding that the administration will not “prejudge” the outcome of Bergdahl’s case.

Let me translate: We can use the pace of the judicial process to pretend for a few more months that this wasn’t a complete mistake.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

We now have government policies that don’t overreact to minor things, but are instead based on things that never happened at all. We have an urban policing policy based on the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie, a campus sexual assault policy based on a lie by one University of Virginia coed, and a FEMA disaster preparedness policy based on global warming that we haven’t experienced in two decades.